Method
We’ve spent the last few pages laying out a conceptual framework to improve your marketing productivity and results.
The key elements are to:
- Understand the buyer’s journey.
- Align your marketing operations with the way customers buy.
- Develop arguments that win over your buyers, that persuade them to move forward in their journey.
- At each stage, ask your buyers to take action.
- Measure your results.
Now you might be thinking, “How do I put these ideas into practice? Is there a step-by-step method that I can use to produce these results?”
That is exactly what we’ll do on this page. It contains a method that produces a business plan for Marketing and Sales, a plan that aligns Marketing and Sales with the buyer’s journey.
Marketing Method
Establish your Goals – Business goal segmentation
Start by setting your goals. Establish your definition of success. What solutions will you sell? Where will you sell them? What distribution channels will you use? In Business Goal Segmentation you define which segment of the market you will serve. You identify which customers you want to find, win and keep.
Profile your Target Customer Audience
Once you have defined your market segment, it’s time to profile your ideal prospects. Which people in these organizations are affected by your solution? Who are their constituents in the organization? What issues and challenges do they face? What are their current strategies for success? In this step you’ll create Customer Value Maps that will show you what your ideal prospects value about your solution and your sales process.
Identify your Customer’s Buying Cycle
Once you have a clear profile of your ideal prospect, then it’s time to understand how these organizations go about solving problems. What are the steps in their buying cycle? What must they do in order to buy? Who do they need to involve? How do they facilitate the necessary change management in their organizations? How long does it take a customer to move through the buying cycle? How many customers do you need at each stage of the buying cycle?
Match your Marketing Operational Strategy to the Buying Cycle
You have a clear profile of your ideal prospects and you know how they buy. It’s time to look at your actions that will help your buyers move through their buying cycle. What do you need to do at each stage to solve problems and answer questions that will enable the buyer to complete that stage? What action will you ask the buyer to take in return for the value you provide? What will you measure?
Craft Arguments that Will Win Over your Buyer
It takes more than simply answering the buyer’s questions at each stage. Customers continue through the buying cycle when you win them over – when you change their mood, change their mind, or change their willingness to take action. How will you appeal to the buyer – by demonstrating your character, your logic, or by evoking their emotions? How will you use story to change the mood of your audience, to support your logic, or to connect to your audience’s beliefs?
Implement the Tactics that will Motivate the Buyer to Act
Pick the right time and place to make your argument; seize the perfect moment. Many arguments fail just because of bad timing. A phone call to someone who is busy. An elevator pitch to a person who is late to a meeting. How will you pick the right time and place to make your argument? You’ll find a persuasive moment in times of change – when the audience is uncertain, when its mood shifts, when it sees evidence that challenges its beliefs.
Which medium will you use to persuade your audience? Different media resonate with different senses – logic to sound, emotion to sight, touch and taste. Email can convey your logic and some of your character, but is poor at expressing emotions. Conference calls appeal to logic; but people want to see your character and experience an emotional connection that happens when we meet in person.
Measure your results
Marketing and Sales invests resources to achieve the business goal of finding, winning, and keeping customers. Manage these resources by focusing on the results of your investments. To be successful using the method described on this page, focus on two types of results. One is business results that produce revenue and profit. The second is marketing and sales results that motivate buyers to move through the pipeline, completing their journey and becoming customers.
At each stage of the buyer’s journey ask these questions:
- Who are you asking to take action?
- What do you want them to do?
- What will you say to persuade them to take action?
- How will you know if they have done it?
- What will you measure?
